Pouring his Hart and soul into QPR

Now look here: Paul Hart fails to see the funny side during Queens Park Rangers’ 3-0 defeat at Ipswich last month

Since Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone bought Queens Park Rangers in August 2007, the departure of another manager from Loftus Road has become as much a part of everyday life as death and taxes.

Twenty-nine months, 125 matches, six permanent managers, four caretakers and a staggering 90 transfers (including loans) later, the club are still not among the play-off contenders in the Championship table.

But mention those figures to the new man in the hotseat, Paul Hart, and he seems completely unfazed. Indeed, it would be interesting to see what does perturb Hart, who succeeded Jim Magilton last month.

This, after all, is a man who was denied the highlight of his playing career when a corrupt referee ensured his Nottingham Forest side were knocked out by Anderlecht in the semi-finals of the 1984 UEFA Cup.

His managerial career has been just as bumpy a ride — firstly taking over at Forest in 2001 with the club £25million in debt yet still taking them to the verge of promotion, before a tumultuous period at Portsmouth this season.

Despite being sacked in November, with Pompey bottom of the Premier League, Hart emerged with great credit for the dignity he showed at a club that are £60m in the red, started the season with just 16 professionals and have continuous doubts as to when the players will be paid their wages.

Maybe that is why he is able to look at the situation at Rangers with a good deal of perspective, insisting he can succeed where John Gregory, Luigi De Canio, Iain Dowie, Paulo Sousa and Magilton have failed.

And even though his contract runs until only the end of the season, Hart is already planning long term.

"I am well aware that this club has proved difficult for managers in the past and we all know that stability brings success," said Hart at the club's snowbound Harlington training ground ahead of tonight's FA Cup third-round replay with Sheffield United. "I have seen a number of managers around the Football League dismissed rather harshly this season and it's time that QPR started to buck that trend.

"I don't see the challenge as succeeding where those other managers have failed at the club, I see the challenge as being to get this team as high up the table as possible.

"Maybe I am seen as a firefighter in my managerial career, but after 40 years in the game I've realised that you can't take anything for granted."

That has certainly been the case at QPR under Briatore and Ecclestone, but Hart is relaxed about his relationship with the Formula One magnates, especially since Briatore's role at the club was consolidated last week as he successfully appealed against a lifetime ban from motorsport for his role in the Crashgate scandal.

"The owners actually run a pretty tight ship — there won't be pots of money to spend in the January transfer window and nor would I expect there to be, although I will be looking to strengthen the squad," added Hart. "But when millionaires and billionaires take over at a club, that raises expectations and I think that may have been quite harmful here.

"This club has been a Premier League side in the past and it can be again, there's no question about that."

Hart is a relaxed interviewee, only becoming terse when asked if he was offered a job on the Tottenham coaching staff by Harry Redknapp last month — "It wouldn't be right to talk about that", is all he's willing to say — yet he becomes most animated when talking about his managerial influences.

And it is clear that no one had a bigger impact on him than Brian Clough, his boss at Forest between 1983 and 1985. Yet there is still a bitterness about the infamous UEFA Cup semi-final in 1984, when Hart scored what he thought was a last-minute winner only to see it ruled out by Spanish referee Emilio Guruceta Muro, who it later transpired had been paid a pre-match loan' of £27,000 by the Belgian side.

"It was disgraceful," said Hart. "I'd never seen Clough so quiet, he knew it was wrong and it destroyed him. We found out 12 years later that the referee had been bribed, but that never got us a medal did it? We would have played Tottenham in the final and you would have backed us to win that. What was it like to work under Clough? Frightening; scary; great. He was the greatest coach I ever had and he never went on the training pitch!

"Two people had a massive effect on my career — Clough for teaching me simplicity and how to get people to do their jobs and Howard Wilkinson, at Sheffield Wednesday, for giving me the organisational skills and the platform to become a coach.

"And as a manager I have to work in a certain way. If I am allowed to work in that way at Rangers, then we'll all be happy here. But if I can't, then it will be very difficult."

Hart knows what he wants. Having learnt from the best, Briatore and Ecclestone would be well advised to put their faith in a man who specialises in rescuing clubs on the slide.